Dam(n) politics

This post is the revival of an old series "All are mathematics" written sometime back as a fictional satirical political commentary. Read the whole series here.

"We are all going to dogs. No body care for us. Not the state government or central government..." Abu cried.

"Well, these politicians does not have any interest to save the lives of people. They are interested only in swelling their vote banks and Swiss bank accounts. Corrupt lot." Divakaran complained.

Rajagopal Master, as usual, was on a walk to the tea shop of Raman Pilla for his daily dose of political gossip, when Abu and Divakar joined him near the library. Abu, an old student of Master, (you have met him before) has come back from Middle East, after his short but successful stint in business and is planning to establish his own business empire in his village, a hair transplanting clinic, which he is confident to be a huge success owing to the increasing cases of baldness, thanks to global warming, global recession and global pollution. Divakar, also an ex-student, was a student union leader in his early days. Later as he inherited a patch of land and a good running family business after the demise of his father, he severed his ties with politics and is now a vocal critic of the dirty pits it has fallen into. Rajagopal Master, in his mind, thinks that it as a classic case of sour grapes as many of his colleagues from earlier times are walking the power corridors, milling great fortunes.   

"It seems the death toll will be anywhere near 4 million if the disaster strikes. Kerala will be torn into two halves and the commercial town Cochin will be below water. We are doomed for an eternity." Abu said. 

"Well, it seems the MPs from Kerala has met the PM and got assurance of some kind." Master told, remembering some snippet of news that he overheard the last day on TV, while channels were being changed faster than the pop up ads appearing with a 3G connection, during the eternal struggle between his son and wife to see channels of their choice. 

"No use Sir, Tamil Nadu politicians have strong hold in center, our guys won't be able to do much against them." Divakar replied in a rage of fury. 

By this time they had reached the tea shop and there also the discussion was on the impending disaster that may be caused by the rupture of the hundred year old dam. Appukkuttan, the librarian of the village library and one of the few computer literate members of the older generation was working overtime to spread the awareness among locals. He used to come up with at least five multicolored posters and slogans daily to upload on Facebook and other social networking sites and it will be a lie to claim that he does not get a perverted kind of pride and pleasure, when he gets likes and comments on them and when the best ones goes viral.

"Everyone has to dedicate their time for the cause, irrespective of  caste, class and religion. This is for the common good." Appukkuttan declared to general public. 

"Hm.. This is precisely the reason I told all of you during the last election time, to vote us into power. Then no one heeded. Now all of you will suffer for it. Historically only Left governments has stood against central government with a spine that is not bend. No use of complaining now." Sudhakaran the local Leftist leader commented in an uninterested tone.           

"Man, this is not the time for getting divided. We have to take this cause above politics. Yesterday also the CM of other state has declared that dam is safe and sound. Why should they care for the dam..? If it breaks they won't have anything to lose." Appukkuttan was furious. 

"Anna, don't forget that my village and hundreds of others like it gets water from that dam. If it is ruptures, there is going to be a severe drought that the world has never seen." That was the dissenting voice of Selvan, who had come there one decade ago as a laborer and got assimilated himself into the society in so much depth that it was the first time most of even thought of him as an outsider. 

"Master, what do you think of all this?" Raman Pilla asked  Rajagopalan Master, while keeping a hot glass of tea on his table. Now all heads turned towards Master, as he was known as a man of good judgement. Normally his arguments were never biased. 

"Hm..." Master sipped some tea, took his time to devour it and to frame his thoughts. Divakar was remembering that moment when he asked a particularly difficult doubt in mathematics class years before.

"I think you all remember the case of Laaly that happened some time back. She found herself in serious trouble when found herself pregnant without getting married. Well, the whole village knew she was into some funny business with that truck driver Ramanan. But when confronted he told outright that there is no chance that it is his, as he had taken all necessary precautions while they were, hm.. getting cozy. There were lot of mudslinging between them, which passed on to their families and in no time our entire community was divided in two. One group told that there is nothing wrong with Laaly and she is just making the whole story up for money. The other group blamed Ramanan for ditching the poor girl after committing to marry her. When things took a nasty turn all the elders gathered and decision was taken to get her examined medically and take a decision based on the result of that examination."

"But what is the connection between this long forgotten episode and the issue of dam?" Abu asked the doubt that lingered on every one's mind while hearing the monologue. 

"Well, this issue is also not different. Kerala claims that the dam is severely damaged and even a mild tremor can cause the rupture resulting in loss of lives. They want to built a new dam and decommission the old one.  Tamil Nadu asserts that there is no need to panic and the dam is strong still. They absolutely deny any claim by Kerala that there is a safety issue involved. Both the parties puts forward diametrically opposed statements as facts. The only sane way to end this argument is to make either parties agree for examining the dam by an impartial agency, the report of which will be agreed by both parties involved and take necessary steps to prevent any disaster before anything nasty happens, just like how we did in Laaly's case."  

Silence reigned. Master finished the tea, kept the cup on the table and rose to leave. All were pondering on the words that they just heard. 

"Master, finally what happened to Laaly..?" Abu whispered in Master's ears, thinking of all that interesting things he missed out while he was abroad...